Love Is Infinite: Bringing Youth Voices in Envisioning Social Emotional Learning for Indigenous Youth

• In Event: Centering Youth Voices and Experiences in Social and Emotional learning Research

Abstract

“Look at this.” An Indigenous youth proudly lifted her painting that features blooming roses with a quote: “Love is infinite, life isn’t.” Behind her was a picturesque window where students loved to gaze for the first signs of spring. The snow just started melting, fueling the river that runs through [name of the town], a close-knit, rural community of 750 people. Nestled in the mountains, [name of school districts] serves students living on the lands of [name of the Tribal Nation]. Like this girl’s painting, storytelling through art and metaphor has been essential for this community to show their deep caring of their land, culture, and ways of being (Iseke, 2013).

Grounded in the Indigenous knowledge systems (Barnheadt & Kawagley, 2022), a multi-year research-practice partnership between a Tribal Nation, a local public school district resided in the Tribal Nation, and researchers from a public university was established to foreground community values in the public schools to support Indigenous children’s belonging and well-being. Using two-eyed seeing (Bartlett et al., 2012), this partnership co-developed Pathways to Wellness, a culturally responsive, Land-based social-emotional learning program that has shown a positive impact on children’s well-being, resilience, and relationships (Authors et al., 2022, in press), educators’ awareness of their own mental health and wellbeing (Authors et al., 2024, in press), and enhanced community-school partnership (Authors et al., 2025).

In this study, we infused storytelling within reciprocal research to investigate how we co-adapted Pathways to Wellness with junior high school students, responding to Elders’ desire to grow this program and meet the challenges of adolescence. We ask: What are these Indigenous students’ experiences of their lives in school? How might this program challenge existing educational paradigms to align with their culture and identity? Using Sharing Circles (Tachine, 2017), school counselors asked students to share visions for Indigenous educational futures through stories and arts. Qualitative analyses of the transcripts and students’ artwork demonstrated youth’s longing for more integration of culture into school curriculum, desires to build communities with and for each other, and tensions in navigating their emerging identities that straddle between the Indigenous roots and the Western worldviews.

This study will advance the knowledge on culturally-responsive social-emotional learning and school experiences of Indigenous youth. Findings will inform our visions of an education system where “love is infinite” for Indigenous students in their educational journeys.

Authors

• Jingjing Sun, University of Montana

• Anisa Goforth, University of Montana

• Deborah Ith, University of Montana - Missoula

• Niki Graham, University of Montana